Pandora's End
by TheSeventhBlake
Summary: It has been several years since the humans were driven from Pandora's soil. Several years since the Na'vi fought back and doomed humanity to extinction. And now, the the world faces judgement...
1. Chapter 1

The cries of the dying echoed through the dense canopy of branches as Markath sped on all fours away from the burning husk of his home, heading for the ground hoping he could hide from whatever force was now perusing the scattered survivors of his people. He had been on the outskirts of the gathering when they had been attacked, that was the reason for which he and a handful of others had survived. Occasionally he caught brief glimpses of others of his kind, fleeing into the dense underworld of the jungle. All of them driven by the same blind panic of the judgement which had been brought down upon them. None truly understanding what the death bringers were or why they annihilated everything in their path.

The ignorant optimism which their Messiah had preached had been shattered in one brief instant, the promise of a new golden age free from the demons turning to ash before their very eyes. They had followed his commands from the beginning, turned aside the evil of the lifeless metal constructs and embraced the certainty which tradition wrought. And yet an enemy of all they held dear now stalked through their beloved home, cutting down fleeing families and destroying all they found.

All that Markath's kind had ever done had been in the Messiah's name, they had followed his teachings of the demons' evils and how they had corrupted and harvested their Earth-mother had cultivated their hatred and distrust into a righteous zeal which the demons could not stand against. For all their heretical creations and strives to push themselves beyond the shaping of their homeland, to push themselves beyond the shortcomings of their 'evolution', they had shown themselves to be little more than parasites. Low life creatures feasting and devouring all they touched.

As the Messiah had said, they had forsaken any right to existence the moment they had developed beyond the spear and bow. That their own creations had corrupted them weakened them. Few questioned him on this matter; having been reformed from the demons and cast aside their ways each that followed him knew he spoke the truth. Whatever uncertainty had existed, even after leading their people to victory against the demons, was quickly swept aside after his return from self imposed exile many months ago. Delving into the very depths of the Eywa, of the harmonic connection, he had sought answers to his uncertainty. It had shown him the way, the way to redeem himself from his corrupt origins, the way to atone for his past life, and the way to lead his new people to the Great Journey. His encounter with the very soul of their creation ascended him beyond the Tourk Makto, gifting him abilities far beyond any of his predecessors, and he had taken the name of Messiah.

He, like all their kind, now understood her wishes that the demons were to be annihilated,

That this task had always been their destiny from the beginning.

Uniting the clans under a single banner once more, the Messiah had used the gifts bestowed upon him by Eywa to catapult all but one of the Thundering Rocks towards the heavens. It was only right, it had been detailed by their ancestors that their only use would to be to cleanse destroy the wretched evil which had threatened them. To cleanse the very air of the demon's homeland and alter it to the needs of Eywa and all her children. Readying it for when Eywa would truly join them to one soul, one being to begin the Great Journey anew. Some had objected, but had quickly been silenced upon seeing the truth in the Messiah's words, seeing that he had developed beyond his former self. So that nothing of the wretched stagnant essence of 'Jake Sully' remained.

For many months he had watched the heavens, guiding the Thundering Rocks towards their target through the Great Ocean which lurked beyond the veil of their material realm.

Through the gifts he had been bestowed, the Messiah had shown them the destruction of the demon's home, and how it had been swiftly purified. The righteous beasts which lurked upon the Rocks, altered and made stronger by exposure to the Great Ocean, tore through the demon's homes. Slaughtering all the mockery of life they found. By the end it seemed no demon or machine had remained alive on the world, all had been purged from existence. The humans had been freed from the silent, soul destroying agony which had been brought about by their mechanical heresy.

With their death the Messiah had promised the end to all threats which might come from the heavens, that the Na'vi would never again suffer threat by the human demon's hands.

The Messiah had lied.

On the second eve of the demon's destruction, with all of the great clans gathered around the shattered remains of the new home of the Omaticaya, they had come.

Machines, burning with fire and hatred, had rained down amongst the celebrating leaders and warriors killing hundreds within seconds of their arrival. Bursting open like ripe seed pods, the machines had regurgitated horrors beyond anything the Na'vi had known. So like the demons and yet so unlike them, these automata beings wore a skin of iron impervious to all harm and carried weapons which stank of the mechanical heresy of the humans. The great clans had scattered before them, the greatest of their warriors effortlessly slain the automata. As many thousands of the Na'vi fled into the woods, driven by the basest fear of a greater predator, the automata had followed burning and defiling all in their wake.

Scrabbling through the dense cluster of trees Markath paused, listening to more screams of his clan and the battle cries of the invaders. It now seemed laughable to call the humans demons. For whilst their ilk was undeserving of existence they had been capable of both mercy and resentment; in the red glow of the automata's eyes he could see nothing. No emotion, no compassion, simply the desire to see his kind dead. Heavy footfalls of metal on wood heralded the approach of more of the soulless beings. Peering from his hiding place he could see it was a lone warrior, clad in blue steel rather than the green of the rest of its kind, with no helm to conceal its features.

Markath felt the shock of recognition as he caught sight of the creature's bare head. Even engraved with metal, surrounded by the half visible lightning of its hood the warrior's race was recognisable to him. A demon. A human, but unlike any other they had seen.

This one's skin was pitch black and both the deep pits of its eyes glowed with a dark red light. It looked less like a human and more like a beast from the old tales used to scare children.

Stomping through the forest, the squat armoured figure tore through the jungle searching left and right. In his gut Markath knew this iron demon was searching for him, or for others of his clan.

He was already dead, moving into the glade in which he hid Markath knew that the demon would soon find him. And that there was no way of fleeing without it spotting and killing him, as he had seen with the short brutal fights between the few Na'vi who fought against the demons. The intricate bladed weapons he carried could do no harm to it, could not pierce that skin of iron. But perhaps he could at least delay it, to give more time for his clan to flee and survive. And perhaps if he was lucky, if he could strike while it was off guard, he could kill it. A thrill of savage glee entered his mind as he imagined himself pulverising the soft flesh of the demon's head, shattering metal, breaking bone and ripping its skin asunder. The demon was directly above him now, pausing as if hearing something then slowly looking down to face him. Markath knew he would never get another chance.

With a whooping cry he leapt up from the undergrowth, ripping his dagger free of its scabbard and stabbing it upwards towards the demon's face. The weapon had been forged from the fang of a long dead creature of destruction, one which served the Eywa and had been used in their times of war during the first Great Journey. Passed down from father to son it had been their chosen weapon, the sharpest substance of their jungle.

The demon spun, rolling out of the way of the weapon far swifter than anything so heavily encased in machinery should have been able to. The fang rebounded off its barrel chest, drawing a slim line through the iron skin and breaking the blue paint which coated it. Before he could withdraw the strike, the demon grabbed Markath's arm in an iron grip and squeezed. The Na'vi screamed as his forearm broke under the demon's grip, shattered bones splintering and turning as it dragged him forwards still rolling. As he flew through the air it delivered two blows into his body, smashing through his ribcage before releasing him and hurling the warrior to the ground. Lying in a tangled splay of broken limbs, Markath stared wide eyed; too shocked to scream out at the paralysing pain wracking his body.

A shadow fell over him, and Markath just managed to raise his head to see the demon glaring down towards him. "Why…" he managed spitting blood and broken teeth from his mouth, attempting to speak in their accursed language "why… have you done this… what are you!"

The creature cocked its head as if in amusement, and for the briefest moment Markath felt a connection between them. A link, almost identical to that of the Eywa, between Na'vi and beast. Then that moment passed.

"We are Vulcan's hammer. The instrument of the Lord of Terra, Xeno" the demon answered raising a snub nosed weapon. "For the desecration and annihilation of Earth, I dub thee Xenos Ambominus."

The demon pulled the trigger, and Markath's world ended.

Chief Librarian Pyrus lowered the inferno pistol, looking down in disgust at the smoking charred remains of the alien warrior. His brief contact with his mind confirming what he already knew. His enhanced senses detected the far off bark of bolter cry as his brothers of the Salamanders fourth company found another fleeing enclave of the cowards. Exterminating them just as they had done to the low tech humans of Earth. The runes present on the auspex scanner which replaced his right eye flashed the status of other sergeants and leaders. Assisting the Imperial detachments who had come to purge the world in revenge for its crimes against the Imperium of Man.

Trees toppled and on the edge of his mind Pyrus felt the familiar hardened senses of the being approaching them. A few moments later the mobile tomb of Ancient Judger stomped into the clearing. The Venerable Dreadnaught's hull was slick with alien blood and the power fist arm dragged behind it the mangled corpse of another of the blueskins. This one dressed ornate feathers and various fetishes signifying him as a member of Xenos' hierarchy. As he approached the dreadnaught dropped the figure before the librarian. "A gift from Commissar Yarrick" the Iron Hands Elder boomed, not bothering with the usual greetings "killed by him personally. It bears the mark of Tzeench."

Pyrus recognised the distinctive wounds dealt by the old man's power claw and recalled his oath upon hearing the statements of Earth's survivors. A vow to see the traitor who had sought the destruction of humanity die by his hand. He was amazed that enough of the body had been left to be identified, or to be searched by the Librarian for signs of the alluded corruption.

Gazing upon the body with his third eye, the psycher's sense, he could see something lurking beneath its skin. A dim glow, the distinctive warp stench of the Empryean rotting at the Xenos' core. A practitioner of sorcery. From the psychic echoes of its mind he could see the atrocities it had committed, how it had willingly embraced Chaos in exchange for the power it gifted him.

Already the telltale signs of mutations were beginning to fester upon its body.

Leaning closer to inspect it Pyrus caught sight of a glint between the folds of the alien's clothing around its neck. Amidst the jumble of chaotic icons and tributes a pair of dog tags, almost identical to the kind carried by the soldiers of the Imperial Guard, hung on a rusted chain. Barely visible through the filth and damage coating it was a small low gothic inscription: Jake Sully. The traitor named by the hundred thousand survivors the Imperials had rescued from the almost destroyed human world. With a snarl the Librarian tore the tags from its neck, setting the corpse alight with his pistol, burning through it until nothing was left but a few charred remains bone of ash.

"This was the one," Pyrus replied to Judger, even as the low questioning growl arose from the Dreadnaught's vox speakers "It was all there in the after echoes of its mindscape. The one who guided the small remnants of the Hive Mind on this world. It most likely came into contact with the Architect of Fate through the psychic connection of this race."

"You looked into its mind?" the Dreadnaught remarked, caution evident in its voice. Like most of his Chapter Judger held psychers, even ones indoctrinated into the Astartes, in distrust. He knew, perhaps as well as Pyrus himself, that they were all too easily corrupted or driven mad by many sights of foul Xenos minds. Something especially true of aliens with origins as dark as those who dwelt within the world 'Pandora'.

"I stared into it" Pyrus admitted "I looked into their beliefs, their misunderstanding of life, and saw that their future held. Stagnation.

As a race they were utterly opposed to any form of development, any technological advance which might ease the burden of existence." he gave an amused snort and kicked to smouldering ashes of the 'Messiah' "To think that any species could be driven by such ignorant stupidity. That even when surrounded by death, and slavering beasts capable of their destruction they refused to create weapons to develop and hunt more efficiency.

Even had they evolved naturally, such childish refusal to move age and develop from their race's infancy would have been their downfall. Such inability to adapt to change would have resulted in their death."

"Then you have confirmed this death world was-"

"The last scattered fragments of Hive Fleet Morloc? Yes. And on some level even they knew."

Judger's servos whined loudly as he swung down to face the Librarian, the armoured head of his sarcophagus meeting Pyrus at eye level. "Explain" he simply stated.

Recalling the scraps of information he had taken from the chapter's library, the human survivors and the fleeing glimpses of memories he had taken from fallen alien, Pyrus did.

Since leaving the still raging war across Armageddon, Yarrick had led the strike force of Iron Hands, Salamanders and Black Templars after the accursed greenskin warlord Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka they had encountered several worlds like Pandora. Death worlds, whose only eco system consisted of abandoned Tyranid bio-forms left to run feral without the guidance of the Hive Mind.

Many of them had been in their final stages. Barren wastelands stripped clean of all resources with the last of the species consisting of a few thousand predators and scavengers left to pick off at one another. All were been doomed to a twilight existence as the more predatory creatures slowly came to devour all things. Many thousands of years ago, a great battle had been fought. Hidden prying eyes of the Imperium and away from the great way-lanes of the Imperial merchant fleets, Chaos had used the world, then known as Azakh, as a hidden location for their perverse experiments upon life.

The arch heretic Fabius Bile had temporarily aligned himself with the warp sorcerers of the Thousand Sons, experimenting and attempting to spawning new daemons capable of indefinitely existing within the physical world. Warp entities with their only true weakness removed from their being. Their experiment had come dangerously close to completion. By sheer fortune astropaths of a passing fleet had detected the sorcery on the planet below. Summoning the Astartes of the Space Wolves chapter the great evil had been driven off world, destroying all they found of the heretic's pet experiments.

Unfortunately, they had not been through enough in their destruction of the traitor's workings.

Totems of chaos, great tomes of the Thousand Sons, had remained hidden in vaults far below the world's surface acting as a beacon in the warp. The Navis Nobilite had taken it as a warning, an ill omen to steer away from. But another force had been drawn to it: The Tyranids.

Sensing the echo through the warp of a great psychic beacon the Hive Fleet designated by the Inquisition as Morloc had closed upon the world ready to feast upon whatever it found. Deploying warrior organisms and a vast 'Spearhead' beast which descended through the atmosphere and held itself aloft via magnetic forces, it the Great Devourer began searching the world for anything of value. Unlike the lush forest which now coated its surface the Pandora of old had been stripped clean by the Thousand Sons, psy-storms scouring the surface and destroying all life.

Finally understanding that it had been drawn to a husk of a world, the Hive Fleet withdrew leaving behind the creatures already deployed. Unable or unwilling to withdraw its forces from the surface. Without a command organism, a Hive Tyrant, to guide them the world had fallen into chaos. Organism ate organism as their accelerated evolution created a new eco system, a new food chain out of the frenzied cannibalism.

Even then the effects of the Thousand Sons could be felt; transmutation spells struck at random, converting many weaker Tyranid organisms into the flora now choking the world. The great 'Spearhead', apparently some airborne variant of the Kraken, was turned to stone heavy such exposure the rogue powers now raging across the world. It broke apart under the strain of its own weight and became the Thundering Rocks or, as the Earth humans, had called it the Montes Volans.

And within it, a greater heresy than any could have believed was spawned.

Whilst the experiments of the chaos worshippers and Bile had long since been destroyed traces of their existence remained. Rotting flesh, bone, and claw. Little but enough bio-matter had been gathered from the world to be absorbed into the Spearhead ship shortly before it had fallen prey to the spell storms. Shortly before the few beasts still loyal to the hive fleets had been lost to the feral madness of individuality. In the depths of its bulk the bio-pools spawned a new breed of Tyranid based upon the scraps of these experiments. Protected from the spells of transmutation even as it had fallen apart the Spearhead completed the first several thousand of what were intended to be a new species within the Hive Fleets. What the stranded Tyranids required: command organisms.

But without the guidance of a Norn Queen these creatures were born with sentience in place of the psychic rapport to the Hive Mind. Their flawed bodies restricted to using a physical link to gain full control of a beast than the psychic telepathy gifted to so many Tyranid synapse creatured. They lacked understanding of their nature and mission, only comprehending their true existance through instinct and subconscious. Freeing themselves of the wrecked ship, they had escaped into the jungle. Subconsciously drawn to the psychic beacons of the ruined Chaos strong holds, they had turned them into their homes.

They called themselves the Na'vi.

Eventually elements of their origins had been discovered by their 'Messiah' many centauries later, as he stumbled upon the ruined lab of Fabius Bile. Like the rest of his kind he mistook the commands of the Hive Mind and used the tomes of the Thousand Sons harness the energy of the warp infesting the world. With a great effort he had hurled the splintered body of the Spearhead, infested with all forms of the mutated Tyranid organisms, through the Immaterium and into the human world of Earth. Wielding them as terraformers, converting the world's atmosphere to suit his kind's own needs, not understanding that he was meant to ready the world for Tyranid invasion.

It had been this act which had caught the attention of the Imperial strike force hunting down the Orks. They followed the warp signature, mistaking it for the Ork fleet, to the primitive human planet sharing Terra's ancient title. They had evacuated the surviving humans from the planet and learnt of the heretical world of Pandora which had been the spawning ground for the creatures which attacked them. And had been guided to it to deliver their vengeance.

"This is as much theory as it is fact." Pyrus admitted as he finished "but the records are accurate. Both Bile's heretics and the Tyranids landed on this place many hundreds of years ago. And the darkness of the hive mind still remains present here, the 'life' of this world reeks with the psy stench of the Devourer's kind.

These Xenos named the trace elements of the Mind's influence, and the psychic control they held over them as the Eywa."

"And the hometrees these Xenos inhabited?"

"The strongholds I mentioned. Most likely the trees were the remains of the Tyranid creatures which had found them. Most likely consisting of the larger Tyranid breeds converted by the transmutation spells."

Judger was silent for some time; eventually he drew himself back up to his full height. "Then they are a hybrid of Xenos and Malleus. All of their kind shall suffer the Emperor's judgement." he replied simply. Pyrus silently nodded his agreement, turning his head skywards to see the drop ships of the Imperial fleet swooped in to land; gigantic barges bearing the Legio Titanicus deployed their deadly cargo in the far distance.

That, indeed, they would.

Story Synopsis: Set after Avatar, the entire film's universe has been discovered to be an obscure backwater part of the Imperium. Jake begins to question his origins as he learns more about the Na'vi and leaves to find out if he will ever be free of human 'corruption.'

During his exile he goes mad upon finding the Chaos artefacts which helped create this race, and is briefly contacted by the Tyranid Hive mind who he misinterprets its 'orders'. He decides to fully embrace the Na'vi ideas that all machines are evil and anyone who develops beyond using a bow and arrow deserves death, naturally his first target is Earth. (Earth in this case is simply a human colony lost during the Age of Strife.) Preaching hate, and referring only to the humans as 'demons', he pushes the Na'vi into a borderline religious frenzy.

Using the floating mountains as his chosen instrument of death he fires several of them at Earth. Using them to transport a large number of Pandora's wildlife through the warp and to use them as atmospheric terraformers, to make Earth uninhabitable for humanity and all life there.

This apparently works, and all but a small fraction of the humans are wiped out. Meanwhile, mistaking the movement of the mountains through the warp for an Ork fleet, an Imperial strike force under the command of Commissar Yarrick finds Earth. The last humans are evacuated and the Salamanders marines who are with the force demand that they wipe out the aliens who attempted this genocide. No one has a problem with this as they are Xenos after all.

Arriving two years after the attack on Earth, the Salamanders and Iron Hands make a drop pod assault upon a major gathering of the Na'vi, who are in the process of an annual celebration the death of the humans and their evil technology. The Na'vi quickly scatter and are cut down as they flee. Upon looking into their minds, as well as listening to accounts of the surviving Earth humans, reading Inquisition records, and Tyranid fleet movements; Salamanders Librarian Pyrus concludes that all life on Pandora, are the remains of a failed Tyranid invasion. Drawn to the world by Thousand Sons artefacts, Pandora having been one of their old bases. The Na'vi themselves are the bastard children of the Tyranids, daemons and one of Fabius Bile's experiments.

Jake's corpse, who had been killed in a convenient 'off screen' fistfight with Commissar Yarrick, is brought forwards by Iron Hands Dreadnaught Judger to confirm this. The Librarian uses his psychic powers to see that he is indeed corrupt and has consorted with daemons.

The book ends with the Imperials deploying their forces on Pandora and the fate of the world sealed…

Very short synopsis: Film Studies and Media student gets fed up and unleashes 40K upon James Cameron's blue Mary Sue furries, and trying to show it's all really part 40K while he's at it.

The same way Halo is really Duke Nukem Forever.

Final Obvious Note: This story is not meant to be taken entirely seriously. Well, take it about as seriously as Avatar's plot anyway.

It's just a suggestion of how to improve the sequel to an already horrific, over-hyped, and overrated franchise. Also meant to partially make fun of the film for its laughably bad message by creating an equally bad story. Namely the message stating that that we're all evil for creating more elaborate tools to complete tasks we cannot perform naturally, trying to make our lives easier, and generally have less people die.


	2. Chapter 2

Dimly illuminated against the neon glow of the display, Colonel Rebleq drummed his stubby fingers against the large bottle of sacra waiting for the inevitable outcome to conclude. All of the command staff were now slumped around the main battle map located in the centre of the room. Most watching with dull enthusiasm as the grey icons of the Astartes strike team clashed against the indigo of another Na'vi stronghold.

The display flickered once more as another fist full of cards landed on it, Killian apparently winning another hand in the small game now taking place between most of the armoury staff. The cards, like most of the items now littering the map, were dog eared relics amongst the soldiers and were handled with far more delicacy than they had been shown in previous years. They were the last of their kind after all, small remnants from Earth and reminders of what had been lost. They were also unique in the fact they were one of the few luxuries amongst the Corps which had yet to harm anyone.

A few of the line troops had come up with the smart idea of trying to use what they had on hand for activities, carving up fallen branches for sets of cards and fermenting fruit into new alcohol. Nether had ended well. Privet Andrews was now in the medical ward where doctors were trying to save the fingers he had lost when one of the 'cards' he had been holding had sliced through them, and the local 'back room supplier' master sergeant Franklin was now being treated with a heavy dose of anti-toxins.

Rebleq was just thankful that she had sampled her own wares before trying to distribute it amongst her battalion, they were having enough casualties as a result of disease and malnutrition as it was. That was the problem with Pandora, everything on the planet appeared to be determined to kill any foreign life forms. From the elements to the local fauna they had yet to truly encounter anything which did not kill or simply make life difficult for them.

A quiet bleep resounded from the map as the Na'vi symbol disappeared, the Astartes one quickly began moving again. There was a brief flurry of movement as everyone downed shots of whatever beverage they were currently consuming, and even a half hearted whoop came from somewhere behind the Rebleq. Propping up the sacra bottle against a nearby monitor he stretched and headed towards the observation window, mumbling something about calling him once the next skirmish started.

Slinging the oversized officer's jacket over his shoulders he strode towards the trio of re-enforced glass window panes which made up the left side of the building. Not that there was much to see anyway, just the muddy bogged down trenches of the human defensive lines and the ever retreating tree-line of the jungle, constantly being pushed back by the flame tanks the Imperials had deployed.

Ah the Imperials, Rebleq thought to himself, now they were a problem. Despite the apparent joint venture to take Pandora from the locals it was clear that they were the ones in power. They had the ships, they had the technology, they had the numbers, and they had the military experience for planetary invasions. And the booze Rebleq quickly reminded himself noting the bottle.

Reaching up he fumbled with his jacket for a few moments before removing the insignia singling him out as a field commander. It hadn't been too long ago he'd been a captain in the Colonial Guard, a military negotiator between Earth and the Lunar colonies, stuck cowering behind a door as something tried to claw its way in after him.

Besides the high command, Earth's various field marshals, supreme commanders and their like, he'd been one of a privileged few ranking above lieutenant who had survived the Earth's death throes. With so few officers left almost everyone above sergeant had been moved up in rank, using those with enough experience to fill the gaps left in their command structure and command Earth Corps' attacks upon the Na'vi. That had been the original plan at any rate, the Imperials had quickly pushed them back to a defensive role guarding the drop zones for more forces to come in from orbit.

Their two major enemies at the moment were not Pandora or the Na'vi; but inaction and boredom.

With the Imperials in both more or less direct control of the invasion and with their Space Marines leading the main charge against the aliens, the Earth Corps had been made largely redundant.

With little else to do besides relay updates to what was taking place to the supreme commanders in orbit and watch the current offensives against the Na'vi all pretence of discipline had been lost. Most of the staff present planetside had taken to betting on the outcomes of the Astartes engagements against the Na'vi; which had quickly devolved into a series of drinking games once it had been realised just how easily the Astartes were devastating what were supposedly enemy strongholds.

Things were little better in the trenches. Soldiers who had previously been thirsty for revenge having lost their fighting spirit upon being pushed to one side to allow the Imperial Guard and Astartes to fight. The bulk of the Earth Corps forces now consisted of conscripts and volunteers with little to no experience in fighting, driven to join by desire for revenge. To begin with they'd barely been held in line and only united by their joint hatred of the Na'vi. After being ordered to hold their position and guard the landing zone it had only been Rebleq's thinly veiled threat involving AMP squadrons which had prevented a full blown mutiny.

Almost everyone carrying a gun on the planet had come to fight the Na'vi, and thankfully the Na'vi had obliged.

The colonel was dragged from his drink addled recollections as one of the Hellhound tanks thinning the tree line disappeared in a fireball, catapulted high into the air as its volatile fuel tanks detonated. A stampede of Pandoran wildlife tore out from the undergrowth and charged towards the gunlines, blue-skinned humanoids just visible riding on their backs and sprinting between them.

"Speak of the devil…" Rebleq muttered as warning sirens began to wale across the trenches.

"Hold! Hold in the name of the Emperor!"  
"Platoon 461, move to support-"  
"-etting overrun over here, we need armoured-"  
"-dropship beta-12 reroute course to second drop zone."

Comm. chatter filled the cockpit as the Na'vi once more swarmed the defensive line in their thousands. Concentrating their number in one specific area attempting to break their lines and enter the trenches which the humans had hastily dug out. This had been the fourth time since their arrival that the natives had attempted this, showing little to no change in their tactics. Having long since moved on to establish a second drop zone and scout out major locations for the Imperial forces to assault, the Astartes had left the defence of the drop zone to the regular human soldiers. The Imperial Guard Steel Legion and shattered remains of Earth's military corps.

Jerking the controls of his AMP to the right, Lieutenant Elliot Braxton opened fire once. The high calibre rounds shredding a pair of Na'vi warriors who had somehow reached the defensive lines, ending their lives before they could leap into the team of soldiers manning the mortar weapon bombarding the swarms of blue savages. The Imperial leading the team signaled his thanks before moving back to direct his attacks.

All across this section of the trench network bodies of the Na'vi, gunned down in similar charges had been piled high. Left to rot where they fell and a testament to their repeated failures. Braxton smirked in spite of himself, watching another flock of banshee riders be cut apart by the chattering Hydra anti-aircraft platforms.  
Many years ago, towards the end of his naïve childhood, he would have been disgusted by such mass slaughter. He would have been protesting against the human's now fighting the Na'vi, demanding that the humans leave the planet and return home. That was before the coming of mountains.

Braxton had been one of the lucky ones, one of those who had survived the Earth's fall. He remembered the news reports when the mountains, mistaken as meteors, had appeared just outside of Earth's atmosphere and had fallen towards the planet. Many millions had screamed, panicked and fled as they hurtled towards their cities. Others had simply waited and prayed, hoping for some miracle to save them. The mountains had not crashed, not cataclysmically destroyed the human race in one fell instant.  
Instead something worse than simple instantaneous Armageddon was unleashed upon the world. Screaming winged horrors fell from them, clawing apart people where they stood. Titanic beasts had stampeded through cities, destroying all in their path and rampaging through broken homes of families. A few, fortunate enough to be far enough away from the first attacks, had been able to escape the living onslaught of Pandora's life only to face a new nightmare.

Rather than simple transports the 'mountains' had begun converting the atmosphere, making it habitable for the Na'vi and their pet creatures but totally toxic to any native to the world. The few ships which the colonists on Earth's moon had sent to try and evacuate the populace had been torn apart by Pandora's winged life forms. Similarly the few airborne military counter strikes had failed. The Pandoran creatures frantically sacrificing themselves, willingly ramming into the rotor blades and air intakes of attack craft, to prevent any chance of humanity's survival.

It had only been through the human's adaptability, pragmatic nature and capacity for ingenuity that a small handful had survived. The government constructing vast bunkers and underground silos to house those lucky enough to have escaped the ever advancing tide of toxic atmosphere. It had been that same capacity to change and adapt which had allowed for their survival. Even as creatures battered down the airlocks to their few refuges they had found ways to repeatedly drive them back and deny them the annihilation of those inside.  
In spite of their efforts, one by one the bunkers had slowly begun to fall to the unending attacks until only a handful remained. When miraculously the green armoured giants of the Imperium's Space Marines rescued them from the planet, less than five percent of Earth's eleven billion humans had survived.

Braxton was shaken from his thoughts as the chattering sound of machine code hissed from his cockpit's speakers signalling the all clear. Imperial tanks, Hellhounds as he recalled, began rolling over the trench lines. Returning to their previous job of thinning the thick flora for the larger human vehicles to begin advancing and root out the continued Na'vi resistance.  
As the tanks advanced Braxton caught sight of a few warriors, survivors from the failed assault, disappeared back into the devastated tree line. No doubt planning to regroup and attempt the same tactic yet again.

It was almost comical how the race continued to again and again charge at the mass of guns, somehow hoping their superior numbers would prevail in spite of so many previous failures. Whilst he had known of the Na'vi were simplistic, unable to change or adapt, their inability to develop new tactical methods was nothing short of ridiculous.  
Faced with such odds and unable to make a direct assault upon such a strong defence, any human fighting force would have long since resorted to guerrilla tactics or stealth. Instead they were idiotically throwing themselves at the human's guns, somehow hoping to attain victory through use of the same tactic.  
Braxton couldn't help but consider that if their roles were reversed, if the Na'vi had been facing the same onslaught of creatures and devastation of the very air they breathed how long they would have lasted. Would they have survived at all?

There was a brief rapping sound on the side of the APU and he looked down to see a Steel Legion officer standing close by. Earth's military had deferred to the Imperials, conceding that they had greater experience in the invasion of alien worlds, and allowed them full command of the invasion. And yet it was disconcerting to be commanded by an 'ally' they knew next to nothing about. They were clearly more advanced than Earth's humans and they were in the Imperials debt for rescuing their forces from their dying world, but little else had been revealed to them.  
"Lieutenant Braxton," he officer spoke, his voice tinny and distorted through the vox speaker "you're hereby ordered to regroup with the rest of your unit. You will be assisting Lord Hekate's assault force in pushing back the Xenos and establishing a forwards command post for our forces."

Before he could question the orders, the officer left at marching pace delivering similar orders to other Earth-born humans positioned nearby. There was no need to send messengers to deliver orders, the communications equipment used by both groups had been easily compatible to the same wavelengths. However, Braxton felt he knew the answer.  
Yarrick, one of the two Imperials leading command of the fleet, had long since left with the vast majority of the battlefleet which had arrived at Earth. His continued hunt for the 'Ork WAAAAAGH!' had been given a greater priority than delivering retribution against a handful of backwards Xenos savages.  
Rather than abandoning the attack entirely he had allowed a number of regiments to remain on the planet to purge it, along with a single Luna class cruiser and a handful of escorts to act as support. This unfortunately left the Tech Priests of the Mechanicus largely in command, both the orbiting flotilla and armoured divisions being loyal to them instead of the Imperial Commanders.  
Braxton had heard the word 'heresy' mentioned many times in regard to their technology, specifically the AMP units rescued for earth. Having not been created from a Standard Template Construct, apparently a form of blueprint used by the Mechanicus as far as he could tell, they regarded many of the vehicles and equipment to be insults towards their Machine-God.

While they had made no direct attempts to destroy the equipment, the Mechanicus had repeatedly refused repair and rearm any technology besides their own. With only a handful of Imperial Guard commanders remaining to counter their authority it was clear that such interference would only become worse over time. Even now they were refusing to connect with the Earth's communications systems, instead relying upon the Guardsmen or messengers to deliver battle plans.  
Thankfully they, like the Astartes who had remained with force, had been outraged by Na'vi beliefs of both technology and humanity being 'evil' beyond redemption. In one of the few human defeats, a Mechanicus Chimera APC had been found gutted and upturned by a Titanothere apparently under the control of the Na'vi. What had been done to the Skitarii, the Tech Guard, inside had been nothing short of unholy.

Descriptions had come back of the corpses of the men inside, many torn limb from limb then placed back together in a disgusting totem displaying their victory. One survivor had been left, somehow alive, tied to a nearby tree by his own innards after being disembowelled. He had spoken of how the Na'vi had taken parts of their bodies such as hands, teeth and ears to establish their kills.  
This did not concern the Mechanicus leaders until they had heard the fate of the Praetorian leading the unit, how the Na'vi had ripped the bionics from his still living body and adorned their clothes with the machinery as trophies.  
This 'defilement' had driven the Magos in command of the cruiser in orbit into a fit of screaming fury. He had repeatedly delayed any advance further into the jungle until he had assembled a force large enough to make an example of any Na'vi.

Suddenly the ground shook, a sudden jarring quake which knocked many men to their knees and had Braxton fighting to keep the AMP upright. A few moments later it was followed again by a second quake, greater than the first, nearer than the first. Many of the Guardsmen were looking up in awe; making the 'aquila salute' he had seen previously aboard their ships.  
From behind him something immense was now blotting out the sun, casting a great shadow over the trench lines. Turning his machine Braxton turned to face a wall of green metal not too far from where the gigantic drop ships had previously been resting. Slowly he turned his gaze skywards and felt his heart stop as he came to comprehend what he was seeing: the assault force he was supposed to be 'assisting'.

There were twenty of them. All colossi of metal and glass, living embodiments of war and destruction towering over the jungle itself. Their hunched forms ended in skull faced steel imitations of human heads, or snarling hound-like canopies lurking out from beneath their armoured carapaces.  
Gigantic horns bellowed in unison, as if challenging Pandora to face them now and a new voice dotted with machine code chattered through Braxton's comm. system:

"This is Princeps Ervin Hekate of Imperius Dictatio to assault group Atalus, All Titans prepare to march!"


End file.
